In an age that is sated with sumptuosity in films,
it is something of a novelty for a film to be commended on the ground (among others) that it is probably one of the least expensive ever manu- factured. But the claim, I should think, was justified in the case. of " If We Had Our Way," which had its pre-view last week. The producer, Mr. John Baxter (who has the screen version of "Love on the Dole" to his credit), hard put to it for all sorts of essentials in war-time, has given the world a picture which needed hardly anything in the way of cast and properties but three small boys from the back-streets of Newcastle, Hull and Bradford respectively, and an "old traveller " with a horse-vehicle, half cart, half carrier's van, which jogged the trio through England—the kind of England Mr. Dalton is helping to preserve—on a journey of discovery and adventure beyond their dreams. The adventure is there to give a ,little liveliness to the story, but the essence of the film is the impact of e country on town boys and their reaction to it. The beauty Lot and al its loveliest is most admirably portrayed, and the
urchins who ended the journey are not the urchins who began :t. What is going to happen to the film now I don't know, but I hope it will find enough favour with Mr. Rank or some other_ screen- arbiter to be at any 'rate well-tried out, for the public most certainly ought to have a chance of passing judgement on something which is perhaps best described as the antithesis of Hollywood.
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